The Curve
by starinhercorner
Summary: Prompt: "M'gann and Gar: M'gann helping Gar with his homeschoolwork, I need some blood siblings feels." @ kidiots's Live Journal ficathon


There's the sound of paper rustling, and out of the corner of her eye M'gann gets a vague sense of Gar shifting in his seat. A pencil clacks against the table. "What is _up_ with _mitosis_?" Gar moans.

"Hmm? Oh, it's a process of the cell cycle, Gar, right before a cell splits into two. After a cell replicates each of its chromosomes, it separates the chromosomes into two identical sets, and each set gets its own nucleus." She rattles out the information as if she's reading it, then calmly turns to the next page of The Mysteries of Udolpho. She's been noticing that the copy she checked out from the campus library has a strangely weak spine, considering its print date. It's as if whoever read it last kept an inhumanly strong grip on it the whole way through, though she supposes she's one to judge. "Why, what does the question say?"

Gar lets out a long, loud groan. "Nooo, sis, you have to _look up_."

There's some Earth saying about some people's minds being like open books, and M'gann wishes to herself that the reverse could be true, because it would make the English Lit class she's retaking and the whole game of catch-up she's playing from over six missed weeks in captivity last semester go much faster. She holds her place on the page with her thumb and obliges her brother's request.

Gar's feet are in the air, tipped with wiggling alligator claws, and the teeth flashing in his wide grin are sharper for it. "_What_ is _up_ with my _toes_, sis?" he repeats with extra emphasis and vigor, going so far as to gesture upward from his position upside-down on the bench.

M'gann wants to chide him for losing focus on his homework, for his own sake, but the giggle bubbling up in her throat won't let her. She smacks her mouth shut with her hand but the laughter runs its course through her shoulders, as well as her eyes. Gar's tail-still monkey, not alligator-swishes with delight.

"Good one, Gar." She lifts her thumb and picks back up on Udolpho mid-sentence. "Back to work," she says cheerfully.

In one swift motion, Gar is upright in his seat again. His worksheets flap in the breeze produced by his swinging limbs. "But sis, this unit is _borrrrring_. I can feel my _brain_ leaking out of my _ear_. That's not good. That's dangerous." His tone takes a grave turn, like a doctor giving a diagnosis in a medical drama (a daytime one). "I might not make it." His tail waves rhythmically behind him as if in deep contemplation.

"If it really was dangerous, you wouldn't think it was boring." His tail halts abruptly, then droops down to under his seat. "And how can biology be boring? You _shapeshift_ into _animals_!"

"You told me _psychology_ bored _you_ in high school," Gar retorts. His cheeks puff up, pushing his freckles out of alignment. His mouth quirks to one side, and the tip of a fang peeks out from the other. M'gann's cheeks go red at the centers. She closes her book around one finger and coughs lightly into her fist.

"That's because psychology is for humans that can't read minds and have to rely on science instead, Gar. I think it's_ neat_, all the things they can do with it, but it's just not for me."

"Well, same for me! Why do I have to learn all the technical stuff about... _cells and stuff _when I can just _do it_? Only _normal_ people should have learn this junk."

She knows he says it proudly, and she's proud of him, too-but the distinction he draws so cleanly, so casually between himself and "normal" puts a crinkle in her brow that she can't will into smoothness. She straightens the line of her mouth instead, then curves it into a smile.

"You want to go into veterinary science _professionally_, riiight?"

"Yeah, and I wanna be leader of the Team someday. _Aaand_ join the Justice League." He rolls his eyes. They've run through the list of his ambitions a hundred times. He's made them all known loud and clear. By now, having them called into question makes him defensive, makes him suspicious that he hasn't been believed. Or worse, that an attempt is being made to talk him out of them. He throws his shoulders back and puffs up his chest.

"Well before you can do any of those things, you have to do your biology homework."

Gar's jaw drops, and his nose crinkles. He looks ready to roar. "_Really? _Even for the_ Justice League_? What about_ Billy-_"

"_Even Billy_ had to learn the same material you're learning when he was in your grade level. Just because he's Captain Marvel doesn't mean he's not a kid. Same with you." When Gar had started Cave-school, he'd been at such an advanced level for his age. He flew past grades 3 and 4 with ease, falling asleep at the books almost every night and dreaming away from waterfalls, away from spinning tires; away from falling. Time had whittled away the attention _she_ could give to him and his coursework on a daily basis, but had slowly eased away his need for a distraction as well, so she hopes that _forward_ won't get much harder from here.

"Noted," Gar sighs. "Wait. _What about Team leader_. Did _Aqualad_ have to learn what a mitochondria looks like...?" It's not so much a question as it is a tenative declaration of victory. There's a mischevious glint in Gar's eyes, and he hops in place so as to perch himself on the bench. His hands and feet together are a bony green cluster gripping the metal edge in anticipation.

"Y-yes! Atlanteans are as concerned with biology as they are with the mystic arts, otherwise their ancestors wouldn't have evolved to breath underwater!" She pulls her hand out of the book and slams Udolpho down for emphasis, then grimaces slightly at her lost place. She's lying. She knows Kaldur cut his studies short to become Aqualad, and from what she's been told, the Atlantean education system differs vastly from any present on the surface. Gar narrows his eyes and sticks out his lower lip; and a moment later, he blinks pronouncedly and nods.

"Cool," he says simply before grabbing his pencil with his tail and turning to his paper. "Sold."

M'gann sighs quietly through her nose. She's lied about more than that. The second half of her junior year of high school, she poured herself into her psychology textbook. She'd memorized the chapters on stress, on memory, on trauma. She still can call phrases and passages from the text up to the forefront of her thoughts. The look into the mind as humans understood it had been fascinating, but not helpful. No instructions on how to make your little brother blink again after a dish slips from your hand and splashes into a sink full of water. She'd learned that on her own.

M'gann bats Udolpho away, sending it sliding to the edge of the table. "What if we make it interesting?" Gar's tail whips and snaps, dropping his pencil on the floor behind him, as M'gann reaches over and gathers his stack of reading materials into her hands. "You, me," Gar's eyes are widening more and more by the second, and her smile does the same. "_Psychic slideshow_." She gives the side of her head three good taps with her finger.

Gar grins so broadly that his ears wiggle. He grabs his pencil off the floor with his tail and throws into the air, catching it perfectly in his hand.

* * *

**Author's Note: if you're wondering who the last person before M'gann to check out The Mysteries of Udolpho from Ivy Town's campus library was, there's a hint in season 2 episode 8, in the scene between Conner and Wendy**


End file.
